Inside a glass-sided warehouse the size of a supermarket, Bruce Harris is building a time machine.

The 64-year-old cabinetmaker leads a team that’s restoring PT-305, a 1943 PT boat, for the National World War II Museum. He’s surrounded by 21st century professionals — naval architects, carpenters, electricians, machinists — and 20th century parts.

“My team has scoured the globe for parts,” he said. “You don’t go to Home Depot and go to the PT department.”

Yet this battle-scarred craft seems to possess magical powers, the ability to transport her modern crew back to a simpler — some would say nobler — time.

“Working on this really is, I’d like to think, like 1943,” Harris said, standing near a banner proclaiming “The Guy Who Relaxes Is Helping The Axis.”

“The volunteers we have here come from all walks of life — I’ve got a judge, a truck driver, a nurse. But we all pitch in. We’re all boat builders when we’re here.”

Born 13 years ago as a single-building institution that told the story of D-Day, the National World War II Museum has since expanded in size — it now inhabits four adjacent pavilions, each the size of a Wal-Mart, with two more planned by 2017 — and scope. This affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution is the country’s pre-eminent museum dedicated to the events of 1941-1945. National in scope, many of its stories and displays have strong San Diego links.

The place, though, is more than a collection of aging World War II displays. If this chapter of America’s past has a future, it is being shaped here.

The United States’ World War II veterans — a group that now numbers 1.1 million — is rapidly disappearing. Each day, about 70 of these men and women die.

When the last member of “The Greatest Generation” passes, how will we remember their struggles and sacrifices?

One answer: Come to the Big Easy, where everything from videotaped oral histories to computerized simulations to rebuilt vessels are enlisted to teach the lessons of this pivotal event in American and world history.

“We’re talking about the meaning of the war to us today,” said Keith Huxen, senior director of research and history. “We’d be living in a very different world if the Japanese empire and Adolf Hitler had triumphed.”

U-T San Diego reporters Peter Rowe and John Wilkens explore how WWII shaped the “Greatest Generation” and our home. These stories will focus on local men and women who helped preserve our nation and re-create our city. The series is supported by U-T’s video partner, the Media Arts Center San Diego.

The museum’s most vivid exhibits are fragile and temporary, made of mere flesh and blood. Veterans like Don Sumner take shifts near the main entrance, spinning yarns. On a recent afternoon, Sumner swept his audience back to 1945 off the Philippines, when he was aboard a Higgins boat — the landing craft that in 1944 ferried troops ashore at Normandy. Then a typhoon struck.

“And I’m still alive today,” the 87-year-old New Orleans resident said, “so you know how happy I am that they made the Higgins boat.”

The versatile flat-bottomed craft was named for the late Andrew Jackson Higgins, a local industrialist famed for three things: cursing, drinking and boat building. The war transformed Higgins Industries into one of New Orleans’s biggest employers, making supply ships, PT boats and the eponymous landing craft.

But when government contracts dried up after the war, Higgins and his shipyard drifted into obscurity. “There wasn’t even an outdoor toilet named for Andrew Higgins,” Sumner said. “He was totally forgotten.”

Higgins’ resurrection began in the 1960s, when a University of New Orleans historian interviewed Dwight Eisenhower. Ike, who had commanded the Allied forces at D-Day, stunned the scholar with this assessment of Higgins: “He’s the guy who won the war for us.”

The historian was Stephen Ambrose, the author of “Band of Brothers,” “Undaunted Courage” and other best-sellers. With Gordon “Nick” Mueller, a fellow history professor, he explored ways to remember Higgins and New Orleans’ role in World War II. In 2000, they opened a D-Day Museum seven blocks from the Mississippi River, on the corner of Magazine Street and Andrew Higgins Drive.

Soon, though, this tribute seemed incomplete. How did the United States travel from Pearl Harbor to Normandy? The June 6, 1944, landing on Omaha Beach succeeded by the narrowest margin, but what happened the next day — and the days, weeks and months that followed? And what about the many D-Days in the Pacific, from Guadalcanal in 1942 to Okinawa in 1945?

Ambrose and Mueller realized that their mission was much larger than D-Day. Congress agreed. In 2003, Sens. Ted Stevens (R-Alaska) and Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii) sponsored a bill that recognized this enterprise as the nation’s World War II museum. The rest is history.

That’s a cliché — and a problem.

FDR’s rewrite

History is often seen as something — yawn! — dusty and dull. In Ambrose’s work, though, the American past was reshaped into a series of gripping yarns, full of suspense and engaging yet all-too-human characters.

HBO turned his “Brothers” into a miniseries, a hit with critics and audiences alike. Then he was hired as a consultant for “Saving Private Ryan.” On set, the historian was befriended by the movie’s director, Steven Spielberg, and star, Tom Hanks.

Ambrose died in 2002, but his appreciation for drama — and Hollywood — is evident throughout the museum.

Perhaps the most popular attraction here is “Beyond All Boundaries,” a 2009 film narrated by Hanks. The “4D” presentation blends archival footage, animation, props (during various scenes, a vintage radio, a naval gun and a bomber’s turret rise out of the stage) and special effects, such as seats that shake when tanks grind through Tunisia’s dusty Kasserine Pass.

“The movie was really impressive,” said Eddy Chaltiel, 27, visiting from Los Angeles with his girlfriend, 24-year-old Julia Eisenstein. “It really made us realize the breadth of the whole war.”

“Beyond” is a 50-minute dash through history, though, skipping the battle of Midway, the firebombing of Dresden, POWs, submarine warfare, the death of FDR and countless other topics.

The rest of the museum, though, works hard to fill in those blanks. The 1942 Midway campaign has its own video theater. “Guests of the Third Reich,” a current exhibit, recreates the experience of American POWs in Europe. “Final Mission,” which opened in January, puts visitors inside the Tang, a fabled U.S. submarine, during its last attack on Japanese ships.

If “Mission’s” special effects — flashing lights, smoke, recorded explosions — seem reminiscent of a theme park ride, visitors exiting the attraction stop at a wall listing all American subs and sailors lost in the war. There’s also a videotaped interview with one of the Tang’s few survivors, William Leibold of Escondido.

This is just one of many tales here that resonates with San Diego visitors. The Medal of Honor Wall, photos and citations from all 464 recipients? It features the late John Finn, a hero at Pearl Harbor and a long time San Diegan.

The factory-fresh Avenger hanging from the ceiling of the new U.S. Freedom Pavilion: the Boeing Center? This Navy torpedo bomber was nursed back to life at North Island Naval Air Station by retirees and Miramar College students.

Those B-24s, seen in black-and-white footage during their bombing raid on Nazi oil refineries in Romania? Many were built by Consolidated Aircraft at Lindbergh Field.

National WWII Museum

Tickets: Basic admission for adults, $22; seniors, $19; students and active duty military, $13; the movie “Beyond All Boundaries” and the “Final Mission” feature are each an additional $5. Free admission to the museum and all attractions for World War II veterans.

You often see white-haired veterans roaming these galleries, yet the past is packaged here to attract all ages and interests. Kids are thrilled, and parents unnerved, getting birds-eye views of that Avenger and other vintage warplanes from catwalks suspended above the Boeing Center’s floor. Presidential trivia buffs study a draft of FDR’s war declaration — pencil marks show where Roosevelt rewrote “a date which will live in world history,” striking the last two words and scribbling the iconic “infamy.”

Researchers attend scholarly symposia on Pearl Harbor, Winston Churchill and other subjects. Boogie-woogie fans applaud the 1940s repertoire of the singing Victory Belles. Foodies order meals at the American Sector, the on-site restaurant of celebrity chef John Besh.

And while you could spend hours roaming the museum, more treasures are tucked inside offices, attics and rented warehouses. Some will emerge into public view when the fifth and sixth pavilions open.

“This will be more than a whole city block,” said Huxen, the director of research and history. “People will want to come and spend the weekend.”

Leather and metal

Perhaps the most moving exhibits are the videotaped interviews or letters and diaries from veterans. These eyewitnesses cite the war’s horror and pain, the occasional triumphs and regular bouts with boredom. Here’s Capt. William Boychuk, writing verse while a captive of the Germans:

“I’m sitting here and thinking

“Of things I left behind

“And it’s hard to put on paper

“What’s running through my mind.”

But even the machines testify to this conflict’s high stakes. In a hangar that San Diego’s USS Midway Museum leases from North Island Naval Air Station, a team rebuilt that Avenger for New Orleans. That job was such a success, the group — known as Flyboys Aeroworks — is now constructing a replica P-40 Warhawk for the National World War II Museum.

Rolando Gutierrez, working on a map case for the P-40 Warhawk
— Howard Lipin

Rolando Gutierrez, working on a map case for the P-40 Warhawk
— Howard Lipin

“We are using 21st century tools to build 20th century airplanes,” said Rolando Gutierrez, 56, the retired AM-PM minimart and Blockbuster executive who leads the group known as the Flyboys Aeroworks.

None of these mechanics, fabricators and engineers can remember Pearl Harbor — most are Miramar College students in their 20s. But by reassembling these airplanes, they’ve gained a visceral feeling for what their grandfathers and great-grandfathers braved.

“All that existed between his skin and an enemy’s bullet,” Gutierrez said of a Warhawk pilot, “was 32-thousandths of an inch worth of metal and his leather jacket. That really makes you think about these guys.”

Besides, these fliers — and their aircraft — had style.

“The old planes have more character,” said Jesse Williams, 28, a former Army sergeant and Iraq and Afghanistan veteran who completed Miramar’s aviation maintenance program. “There’s more soul and thought and character to these planes than there is to an F-18.”

Last August, the refurbished Avenger was loaded onto a flatbed truck and hauled to New Orleans. The Flyboys followed, staying in Louisiana until December, helping to install the dive bomber and the other planes displayed in the Boeing Pavilion.

The Flyboys returned home around Christmas and resumed their next job, the Warhawk. That will require about 10,000 hours of labor; the finished fighter should be delivered to New Orleans this September.

As for the plane’s new job, keeping the past alive for future generations? If the National World War II Museum has its way, that mission will never end.

By the numbers

Like the era it commemorates, the National World War II Museum seems boundless. Some measurements hint at its scope:

375,000: Visitors a year

70,000: Letters and diaries

7,000: Oral histories

11.25: Vintage aircraft, including the 20-foot section of a B-24 fuselage

104: Wingspan of the Army Aircorps B-17 Flying Fortress, in feet

54: Wingspan of the Navy TBM Avenger, in feet

78: Length of PT-305, in feet

39,000: Rivets in PT-305

350,000,000: Estimated cost to build all six pavilions, in dollars

10,800,000: Annual budget, in dollars

Countless: From German artillery pieces to Russian machine guns, knapsacks to bugles, there’s no exact count of the museum’s holdings.